Inhabited By Winter
by Rory J. Evans
Summary: Peter/Caspian with hints of Peter/Edmund. Peter spends his first winter home from Narnia alone and taunted by what he left behind. Edmund tries to help while Susan grapples with what she did.


Disclaimer: I am not C.S. Lewis and I credit the poem "Inhabited by Winter" to Ron Wallace.

And if we  
find ourselves inhabited by winter,  
the mind's blank sky branching nowhere,  
snow the best the cold heart can hope for,  
buried under time's fraying comforter,  
hand on naked back or thigh on thigh  
can send us south into the middle of July.  
-- Ron Wallace

There's not much that Peter wants to remember about winter: it is cold to the point of freezing the blood in his veins, sharp enough to slice through skin and worse, and more lonely than any other time of year he can think of.

Peter spends his first winter back from his second time in Narnia alone, closed entirely from the world, his siblings, any and every concern, frozen in the heart of his winter along with his hope.

Peter finds that he dreams a lot during winter, that the season has some sort of residual magic hold on the caverns of his mind that fill him with thoughts of dark-haired princes reflected tauntingly behind casings of glass or tanned summer skin that teases him with hints of warmth, of traces of Narnia.

The daydreams - fitful happy daydreams - are worse when played out against the dismal backdrop of falling snow. He slashes at it - both the dreams and the snowflakes - but the visions persist, sometimes melting into his subconscious like the snow that flutters innocently around him, landing delicately on his lashes and mingling with his angry tears.

He sits in the same flannel pajama pants that he has been sporting for nearly a week in the same indented place at the edge of his bed; _that _he's gotten used to.

Sometimes there is the quiet pitter-patter of shoes outside his door, accompanied by a quiet shadow under it. It shifts, darkens the room a little - almost completely obscuring any light -, another joins it, they hesitantly whisper - the shadows - , and move on. _It's for the best anyway; he'll move on too, somehow; give him some time._

He likes to think that if he's quiet enough no one will hear him, though if he were louder, he doesn't think they would want to.

Peter's heart thrums with the maddeningly slow pace of winter and he thinks that some days - after he loses track of the seconds - that it stops, if only briefly as if to remind him that he doesn't really need one, that his body insists on living without it.

Desolate, Peter can do nothing but sit and think. He thinks of how times were different, of how when he was High King, he would also sit and think (but of different things), and that his winter nights weren't always filled with the desperate loneliness that makes them hollow now.

He thinks about the times when something besides wrinkled sheets filled his bed, when there were actually warm breathing bodies that eased the pain of knowing there were cold dead ones on the battlefield. He lets his head rest back, closes his eyes, tugs at the very remnants of his thoughts, still alive in his mind, and tries to remember a different bed, a different time.

--

"Is Caspian there with you?" Susan asked from behind the door.

Caspian's lips loosened their hold on Peter just before he drew a long agonizing swipe up the length of his cock and sucked at the tip. He looked at Peter through dark lashes and Peter only just managed to draw out an attempted casual "No," before Caspian resumed licking broad stripes and then taking him completely into his mouth. He released a shaky breath, tugging at Caspian's hair and jerking his head warningly towards the door.

"Are you sure? I thought I saw him come this way."

"No, sorry Susan." Suck kiss lick. "I haven't seen him." Gentle fingers prying his thighs open.

A frustrated sigh echoed from behind the door and a satisfied groan from within.

"Well, if you see him, tell him I was looking for him. I need to ask him something."

Peter threw his head back, the pillow deflating where he let it fall, and desperately clutched at the sheets, jaw set. He let out a strained "Will do," hoping that that would be enough to send Susan on her way and finally _finally_ leave him a moments peace to make the sounds he knew Caspian loved to hear.

"_God, Caspian_," he let himself whimper: throat tight, muscles taunt, and Caspian humming between his legs. He was so close.

"Peter? Are you sure you're all right?"

No, he wasn't all right. He was brilliant, magnificent, so filled with pleasure, and the sight of his beautiful Caspian around him, that it hurt.

"Fine, Susan," he said tightly. He meant to add a sardonic "Why do you ask?" but figured she was more apt to leave if he didn't give her a question to answer.

"You sure?"

"_Yes_," he hissed, the plea more directed towards Caspian, the last sounds of the word dissipating into moans.

Just as Susan was giving him a final "All right then," he came, gloriously hard and fast, and allowed himself to groan out loud, not caring what or whom Susan heard, when he found his release.

She left, he suspected, because he didn't hear any more noise in the hallway after that. Caspian now settled himself comfortably at his side, warm hands idly stroking his chest before Peter gave him a mischievious grin and slid down his body. "My turn."

--

Peter thinks that maybe he should get used to it - though he knows that he never will. He thinks that life doesn't work how he wants it - works, instead, how Aslan wants it - and he can't help but slam a fist into the mattress at the vision of the golden lion contrasting so sharply with the vision of his dark Caspian, hand buried in his mane and smiling as if he had already forgotten.

He looks over to the now open window, wisps of air and snow drifting steadily in. Peter thinks he can see the gleaming white smile of the Witch as she runs a cold finger down his cheek and satisfied, whispers - "So _broken._"

He swats at it, makes a grab for his sword, forgets, jumps to his feet, desperate to rid himself of the cold lingering touch, only to find himself grasping at his own breath coming out in short spurts.

"You see. This is what Aslan wanted you to have and what your sister betrayed you for. Suffering. If you had only chosen what I had shown you," she echoes around the hollows of his mind.

"My sister?"

She smiles gently, almost in pity. "You did not know that it was Susan who told Aslan about you and your Prince? It is she who is to blame for the end of your stay in Narnia. For your unhappiness."

"No, she didn't know. She couldn't have-" he tries desperately, not sure whether he is trying to convince the witch, himself, or anyone else.

"But she did," the Witch speaks firmly. She runs another finger down his cheek and turns the side of his jaw to face the window, murmuring like a mother to a child. "If only you had freed me in the How, young King. I could have taken all this away."

She points with a frozen pale hand at the walls that are replaced by meadows and flowers, clear blue skies, beaches, golden sands, the Cair restored to its former glory, Narnia exactly how he remembers it just, just there waiting for him and a slim hand reaching out for his.

"If only," she intones and the dream melts and Peter, leaning out he window, feels that cold brutal rush of winter and the smile of the witch's lips on his cheek as he crashes forward into the ledge and falls to the floor.

"If only," he repeats desolately, the sound of her gentle laughter still in his mind. He stares at the floorboards beneath him and notes offhandedly that his side is beginning to throb. He ignores it.

It can't have been Susan, he thinks to himself, who alerted Aslan as to what he and Caspian were doing in between battles and in between sheets. He'd thought she only had a passing interest in Caspian, one that diminished as time when on, and he was sure, had disappeared all together. Besides, he reasoned, they were careful, and bar a few slip ups, acted with the utmost discretion. There were the stolen kisses in the halls when they were sure no one was there, slight gestures, fond smiles, but nothing that would arouse any suspicion.

Peter pushes the thoughts away, angry at himself for even considering the words of a long dead witch that he is sure is only a fragmented mirage brought on by his own solitude. He shakes his head to clear it and blinks unfocused eyes; the cold gives him headaches.

No one comes at the sound of his crash and a quick glance at the clock confirms why they wouldn't - 3 AM. Experience has taught him to check for broken ribs or sprained bones, but his lips are already turning blue and his hands are shaking too much to feel. No longer a King and no longer a people under his command who depend on him, he thinks it doesn't matter if he does die curled beneath the window, a frozen statue, a testament. He only does hope - with a desolation he has never felt before - that he might be warm at least one last time.

Peter struggles vainly to right his body, legs firmly set at bent angles, He places his hands on the sill to steady himself and is surprised at how pale they look, even against the white window and snowy landscape in front of him.

Somewhere behind him, he hears the tentative click of the door, and feels rather than sees the sliver of golden light beside him, not quite touching him.

"Oh, Peter." Two pairs of hands rush to pull him away from the window, misinterpreting his intentions for more sinister thoughts.

Edmund shuts the window with a harsh snap, the wind from outside only succeeding to blow a final gust of snow onto Peter's bare feet before he can close it. Peter stands numbly, registering only the dark hair - now grown - and lean back through half-lidded eyes. His mouth opens in a small "o" but the sound is trapped in his throat. He panics - the vision of the Ice Queen, white menacing hands at his neck, springing to his eyes.

But Edmund turns around and only when desperate clinging fingers are peeled off his throat, does he realize they are his.

Edmund holds them tightly pressed against his own, a mound of warmth encasing ice, and he speaks in lower, graver tones, "Oh, Peter," as if in benediction or quiet regret.

But Peter only recognizes the all too familiar way the "r" rolls off the boy's tongue - so _naturally _-, and not through teeth chattering from the cold. He notices how the fingertips rest against his, interlacing between some, pressing firm against others - like a lover's - and not in offered brotherly affection.

He notices the way the same eyes search his - the same chocolate brown rimmed with edges of gold - in furrowed-brow, unknowing concern, and he thinks that those were the eyes that he saw every night: those eyes staring, searching, wanting what had been denied to them by the lion whose gold-tipped mane was the same color. And the same smell floods his senses, the same warm bodily scent that settles low in his belly and creates knots of warmth that unravel the tense cords of the cold.

Peter sighs, breath ghosting over the other's face, and leans into the touch. If he could only will those arms to wrap around him one last time, give him something - _anything _- he thinks he could live with the rest of it.

The boy with the dark hair runs his hands - strong rough hands, sword wielding hands - up and down his arms and then pushes him until he stumbles somewhere in the direction of the bed and is shoved under the covers. The body leaves him and he whimpers at the loss, only to have heavy blankets thrown on top of him and the body slide down to press itself firmly into him, bare chest on bare back.

"Jesus, Peter," the boy mutters and the way he sounds is so much like Caspian, feels so much like Caspian, is possiblymaybe Caspian. Peter can't turn around, can't look, because he knows that he isn't, but the way the hands are running up and down his arms is a sensation that has long been lost to him and he doesn't want it to stop.

"What did you think you were doing?" He sounds angry; the way his voice trembles - from anger or cold, he doesn't know - is so much like Caspian's.

He begins again, Peter hanging onto every semi-reminiscent sound, afraid he will miss it and lose the it for another thousand Narnian years: "Do you know what would happen if we lost you, Peter?"

"If _I_ lost you," he says quietly and burrows deeper into his back, resting cheek on shoulder blade, eyes closed.

"We go through all this and more in Narnia and here you are standing at an open window catching your death. Please tell me you weren't about to jump. Please tell me it hasn't gotten so bad that that's what it's come to."

"No." Quiet, subdued, the hands still continue their movement - gentler now that he's warmer - almost as if caressing and Peter can't stand to form together any other coherent syllables.

"So what were you doing?"

"Forgetting." He means to amend that by saying that he was _trying _to forget, but the knowledge that he failed stills the thought in his throat.

"What?"

"Caspian."

Edmund sighs. "Yes, I know."

Peter shifts in the circle of his arms, and shamelesslypresses his legs between the other boy's, resting his head beneath his chin under the pretense of warmth.

"You're so _warm_, Caspian."

"I'm not-"

"Caspian. I know, Ed. Pretend, _please_. I just need this one last time."

They both have the same thought: that maybe if they pretend just this once, it'll ease the ache - Peter's for Caspian and Edmund's for his brother. It doesn't work that way, they know, but they can try. And when they go back to their separate rooms to sleep in separate beds, the sensations they memorize now might stand to last them for at least a little while.

Edmund feels a sudden pang with the realization of what he's about to do, what he's about to give Peter but also what Peter is about to take from him. He's going to forfeit his right to be loved by his brother as he is and, instead, allow himself to be changed in his mind into his former lover. He thinks that he can live with it -- but it's just that, that he doesn't want to live with it, wants to be Edmund to Peter, not an imitation of Caspian -- and knows that he will have to because it's all he has. He nods.

"I saw her. I saw the White Witch." Edmund stiffens but Peter continues. "It would have been so easy. So easy to give into what she wanted. But I didn't and now? Now look what I have." Edmund can feel his brother's voice break against his chest, irregular breathing against his ribs.

"I'm so cold." And Peter is too still, too lifeless for someone so cold. And Edmund can't help but give in.

"What do you want, Peter?" He means to ask Peter what he needs but he knows that he couldn't give it to him, not fully.

"Just this. Just hold me like this. Just for tonight." And they both know that tonight won't be enough. An eternity wouldn't be enough, not without Caspian there - not Edmund - to warm Peter in the dark of his perpetual winter. But Edmund, who knows the sacrifices Peter has made both for him and for Narnia, does only what he can and wraps his arms tighter around his brother.

--

Susan sits sometimes, just sits, folds her hands in her lap to keep them from fidgeting. Her mother looks at her worriedly, like a petulant child, Susan thinks, head tilted to the side, contemplating what she couldn't even begin to comprehend. Susan thinks that she may have been a child once too; once, but now she can't remember, good memories tainted by what she has done.

She knows that Peter forgave Edmund for what he did - they _all ­_forgave Edmund - because they were all children then, still reeling from the shock of a new world. His faults were ignored, shoved to the side as momentary lapses in judgment, not inherent mistakes. _He_ couldn't be blamed.

But Susan feels the betrayal inside her, not just something of circumstance, but a part of her that lays dormant until something comes to rouse it. It clenches painfully whenever she sees her brother, her once High King Peter the Magnificent brother, cast glances about with hollow, pleading eyes that go from wanting it to be over to not wanting it to have ever started at all. And that's what pains her most: that he would rather have never known the magic of Narnia than suffer through this torment.

She doesn't come to visit him much anymore, leaving that task either to Edmund or Lucy, because she can't bear to look into his eyes and know that where Edmund betrayed him of magically enchanted desire, she did so of her own free will, and worse, of jealousy.

Even worse, she clenches her fingers together in her lap, their shadows forming odd shapes on the floor, is that she still feels that same seething jealousy that should have long ago been quenched by distance and the inevitability of her situation. She shouldn't still want Caspian, shouldn't still thirst after the Prince -- no, _King _-- that has only ever belonged to her brother; she sees that now. They fit into different categories, live in different worlds, aren't meant to be and yet - if only for a second, the fleeting thought crosses her mind that maybe Caspian and Peter weren't meant to be either.

The spite in her wants her to believe that fate orchestrated this, that it was meant to happen either way, that Peter would have left anyway, that they would have been pulled apart by duty or circumstance, but she knows that that is not the case.

Aslan had not had a problem with them until she had twisted their actions and their words, telling him she knew her brother and that Caspian was only hurting him, using him for his own devices. She told him she had only wanted to protect him and convinced herself into thinking that Peter had accepted that; Caspian too.

And the kiss - Caspian had responded, had rest his head on her shoulder.

To look at Peter.

She blinks away the hot drops pooling in her eyes; to look at Peter who was standing behind her. She was so blind.

She thinks she feels worse than Edmund could have ever felt because he could have only cost them their lives; Susan watches Peter slowly wither and die before her eyes. Every time she walks down that hallway, narrower than she remembered it to be, she can hear the echoes of every step she takes: _because of you, because of you_.

Susan knows that this is why Aslan won't let her back into Narnia; not now, not ever, she thinks. Innocence and gentility, once lost, are lost forever, and that border she has long crossed. She'll have to deal with it now, bear it like her brother does, though, for all the wrong reasons.

She slowly puts on lipstick and prepares to go out; she's a big kid now.

--

When Edmund wakes up, he is still wrapped around his brother, arms and legs so entangled that he doesn't even want to begin to undo them - doesn't have the heart to wake Peter either. Peter shifts slightly towards him and makes a soft contented sound that sounds a lot like "Caspian," but Edmund chooses to ignore it.

Lips touch his neck and words ghost in between them; those are harder to ignore. "Wake up." Kiss. "Cas-." Kiss. "pian." Another kiss just below his chin, far too close to his lips, and only then does Edmund open his eyes and pull away.

Peter opens his eyes too, wondering at the loss of contact and momentarily forgetting where he is. For a smug second, Edmund thinks about the fact that he was the one who cared for and comforted his brother last night, not Caspian, but the thought fades when he sees his brother's expectant face, eyes still adjusting to the light, and mind still adjusting to the feel of a body next to his after such a long time spent sleeping alone in the cold.

"Oh, God. Ed." Peter's voice, still a little hazy from sleep, turns sharp and surprised by the abrupt realization of his actions and the close proximity. Edmund is tempted to make some clever remark to mask his hurt at never being enough for his brother, but he keeps it to himself.

'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to keep you here for so long," he begins again, already moving away from Edmund and to the cooler side of the bed in self-consciousness. When he hisses and recoils as his feet touch a particularly cold spot, he has to push down the shivers that threaten to send shocks up his nerves, both at the memories of the night and the sensations.

"It's okay. I didn't mind," Edmund says, trying to be nonchalant yet, hoping that Peter picks up on the fact that he won't mind if it happens again; and just to emphasize it, he gives Peter a kiss of his own, far too close to his lips, with the hopes that Peter won't mind that either.

It's the best he's slept in a while, since Narnia - if he can remember that far back, though the calendar tells him it's only been a few months. Edmund looks down at Peter's golden hair splayed on his chest, brings fingertips to smooth it down, and considers asking Peter to make their sleeping arrangement permanent. Maybe in time Peter will forget all about Caspian and come to Edmund's bed only to be with him. For now, there is the solace they have in their found comfort; maybe it's enough.

"Thanks, Ed. You're a good brother."

Brother, Edmund thinks, and tries to wrap his thoughts around the complicated implications of the word, but he finds that it easier to wrap himself around Peter instead and interlocks his hands where they meet across his shoulder. Outside the snow has melted a little with the morning sun and he knows that, at least, he hasmade Peter a little happier, a little more whole; he'll have to live with that.

"Just returning the favor," he murmurs into his brother's hair quietly, but Peter has already fallen asleep.


End file.
